Contents

Operational
History

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Civil War

The minelayers were commissioned by the Government of the
Republic to SECN shipyards
at Ferrol
in 1935, a year before the start of the Spanish Civil War. The
first three ships of the class were seized by the insurgents and
served in the rebel fleet. Their first deployment was the blockade
of Bilbao.[1]

Due to the lack of destroyers in the Franco’s fleet, and the potential of
their armament, the main mission of these ships was not minelaying,
but to face Government units in open combat, despite their slow
speed.[1]

Jupiter

Along with Vulcano, the Jupiter was one of the
main players in the blockade of international shipping in the ports
of Biscay, where
she took part in the capture of several merchantmen, especially the
British Candleston Castle, Dover Abbey and
Yorkbrook, the French Cens and a number of
Republican trawlers during the second half of 1937.[2]
She also laid four minefields off Santander and Gijon, from April to July 1937. The rebel
battleship España was lost on
30 April after hitting by accident one of the mines at Santander.
There were only four casualties among España`s crew.[3]

On 17 July, while on patrol off Gijon, the Jupiter
caught two British cargo ships while they were attempting to run
the blockade. One of them, the Sarastone, managed to reach
the harbor despite being firing on. The other steamer,
Candleston Castle, stopped after the minelayer fired two
shots across her bows. She was handed over by the Jupiter
to the auxiliary cruiser Ciudad de Palma, which escorted
the captured merchantman to Ferrol.[4][5] A
fruitless search was launched by the Royal Navy's battleship HMS Royal
Oak and the destroyer HMS Basilisk.[6]

She engaged the Republican destroyer Císcar on 10 August
off Gijon. During this exchange of fire, the Jupiter guns
accidentally straddled the British destroyer HMS
Foxhound.[7][8]
Occasionally, she also provided support fire for the rebel troops
inland.[2]

Battleship HMS Resolution

On 5 October, while she was escorting the seized freighters
Dover Abbey and Yorkbrook to Ribadeo, the former vessel sent a distress
message to HMS Resolution, giving the
position and course of the convoy and claiming that her capture had
taken place outside territorial waters. Actually, they have been
caught by armed trawlers two miles off shore, well inside Spanish
maritime boundaries. The Jupiter successfully outran the
British battleship and the convoy reached destination without
incident.[9]

At least five minor vessels carrying refugees and soldiers of
the Republican army where seized by the minelayer after the fall of
the last government's strongholds on northern Spain by the end of
October.[10]

On Christmas Day 1937 she shelled the port of Burriana, near Castellon, in the Mediterranean coast,
where the British freighter Bramhill was at anchor. The
merchant was hit by several rounds and had to withdraw to Marseille to undergo
repairs.[11][12][13]

Towards the end of the war, along with the auxiliary cruiser
Mar Negro, she supported the landing an Infantry division on Mahon, Minorca, after the Republican surrender of this
island, on 9 February 1939.[14] She
was one of the units involved in the blockade of Alicante, where thousands of
refugees gathered in order to flee Spain when Franco's victory was
in sight. Her sister Marte, commissioned a few months
before, took part in one of the last international maritime
incidents of the war on 19 March 1939, when she prevented the
British steamer Stanbrook from entering Alicante. The
ship, chartered by the Republican government, went back to Oran, Algeria.[15][16] The
Stanbrook eventually reached the Spanish port on 27
March,[17]
after the Nationalist side displayed some indulgency toward the
evacuation of refugees in return for the British recognition of
Franco's legitimacy.[18] Two
days later, the Stanbrook left Alicante bound for Oran,
crowded with at least 2,000 people, one of the last ship to either
enter or flee Republican Spain. Her Welsh skipper, Captain Archibald Dickson, later
killed in WWII, is today remembered as a hero in Alicante.[19]

Vulcano

Minelayer Vulcano during WWII, displaying neutrality marks
on her bow

The Vulcano temporarily blocked the entrance to Gijon of the
British merchants Stanray[20] and
Stangrove.[21]. At
the end of the war in the north she joined a naval squadron which
drove back the steamers Hillfern, Bramhill,
Stanhill and Stanleigh off Cape Peñas, seizing a
number of small Republican vessels crowded with refugees in the
process.[22]
During this period she shelled, without success, the British
Thorpebay when this steamer entered the port of the
Musel.[23]
Between the last months of 1937 and 1939 Vulcano was
active in the Mediterranean, where she was part of the rebel fleet
which bombarded Castellon, Burriana and Vinaroz on Christmas Day
1937.[13]
She played a key role, along with her sisters ships, in ferrying
troops after Franco's army reach the coast between Valencia and Barcelonaon April
1938.[15]

On 17 October 1938, she seized the Soviet cargo ship Katayama, of
3,200 tons. She also played a secondary role in the capture of the
Greek merchant Victoria by the auxiliary
cruiserMar Cantábrico and the British
Stangrove by the gunboat Dato, in the final
months of the civil war. All these freighters joined the Spanish
merchant fleet at the end of the conflict.[15]

Perhaps the most famous action of Vulcano is the chase
and capture of the Republican Churruca class destroyerJose Luis
Diez in the Strait of Gibraltar, in the course of a battle fought
as close as 50 meters between the ships involved. The Diez
eventually became stranded in Catalan Bay, in territory of Gibraltar, the
last day of 1938. The destroyer was turned over to Franco's
government after its recognition by Britain as the legitimate
authority in Spain.[24]

She was the leading unit of an aborted landing at Cartagena on
7 March 1939, after the withdrawal of the Republican fleet from its
bases and its internment at Bizerte. The operation was mounted on the
belief that anti-communist Republicans had taken over the port once
the Government navy fled. However, loyalist forces retook control
of the coastal batteries around the harbour. All the ships received
the order of aborting the operation, but two transports, the
Castillo de Olite and Castillo Peñafiel, deprived
of radio, continued toward Cartagena undeterred. They were the
former Soviet steamers Potishev and Smidovich, of
3,545 and 2,485 tn respectively, which had been seized by the
Nationalists at high seas.[25] The
Castillo de Olite was sunk by a 381 mm battery close to
the docks, with a loss of life of almost 1,500. Meanwhile, the
Castillo Peñafiel had a narrow escape, harrased by
Republican aircraft. In a letter to General Franco, Admiral
Francisco Moreno put the blame on Vulcano´s commander for
his failure to prevent the departure of the freighters, as ordered
by Moreno himself. The Vulcano apparently gave green light
to the transports after receiving contradicting orders from the
high command to proceed.[26]

Along with the cruiser Canarias,
Vulcano landed two infantry batallions at Alicante on 31
March, the day before the official end of hostilities.[17]

Refurbishment

Of the four vessels, only Jupiter and Vulcano
took part in the modernization program after the agreements with
the United States, and were reclassified as frigates. The
modernization was held in Cartagena between 1958 and 1961. The
antisubmarine and antiaircraft weapons were updated by adding a squid multiple
mortar and Bofors 40 mm guns. The units were also
fitted with radar. Both ships joined the frigate squadron along
with those units of the first Pizarro class. The
Jupiter was written off the Navy list on 23 November 1974,
and Vulcano was used as a base ship from 12 March 1977
until her final decommissioning on 30 April 1978, this being the
last warship to be removed from service of those who participated
in the Civil War.[27]

The Marte and Neptuno remained unchanged until
their decommisioning in 1971 and 1972 respectively.[27]

^
"The British government assumed that Franco would overlook the
activities of the occasional merchant ship." Graham, Helen: The
Spanish Republic at war, 1936-1939. Cambridge University
Press, 2002, page 422. ISBN 052145932X